


a moment ago

by paintedpolarbear



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Episode: c01e068 Cloak and Dagger, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-05 23:46:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18376559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedpolarbear/pseuds/paintedpolarbear
Summary: The world had taken too much from Vex'ahlia; Glintshore was just the latest on a long, long list of thieves. There was only so much more taking that she could endure.





	a moment ago

**Author's Note:**

> oh, i've been low / but dammit, i bet it don't show / it was heaven a moment ago / i had it (almost) / we had it (almost)  
> —novo amor, repeat until death

Vex’ahlia stared out over the endlessness of the Ozmit Sea, the waves unbroken by even the slightest rock from horizon to horizon.

“Better we stick to the air and keep high,” Captain Damon had said three hours ago, as he steered the airship sharply upward into a cloud bank that would obscure them from the Archipelago below. “We can’t afford to go on getting the attention of any pirates.”

So they were two days at least from the nearest skyship dock, possibly days more from Whitestone, Pike, and the last thin hope that any of them had of seeing Percy alive again. The days that stretched out before them might as well have been years.

_Cassandra’s going to be heartbroken,_ she thought abruptly, and then the hot sting of tears rose in the back of her throat again.

A soft blue light sputtered beneath the main hatch, and the door swung open to reveal the watery-translucent divine image of Pike Trickfoot. She looked spent—exhausted—hair awry, face disheveled, smoothing down her robes with one hand as she walked. By her expression, Vex knew there was only disappointment and bad news to come.

“I was wondering where you were,” Pike said, crossing the deck to the stern and propping herself against the one dry bit of the quarterdeck, under the lip of the roof. “You should come down. It's going to start raining again.”

_Down? Into the dark, stuffy hold, where there's nothing but silence and awkwardly averted gazes and the ever-present reminder of our collective failure to plan ahead? No, oh no._ It tied her stomach in knots to think about. Out here, where the air was cold and she could see for miles and _nobody else was looking_ , at least it was easy to imagine the knots were from knowing how high above the water they flew, and how deadly the fall would be.

Pike was probably right about the rain, though. Out on the edge of the waves, tinted gold and bright purple by the sunset, Vex could see more storm clouds gathering over the water.

“I've got to—” She swallowed, hating the sudden quaver, the _weakness_ her voice betrayed. “I’m going to keep the watch.”

“All night?”

“No. Just—A few hours, maybe. I couldn’t sleep yet.”

Vex uncrossed her legs to relieve the ache, crossed them again, shifting the ache to her arms and her stomach, around her iron grip on the barrel of Bad News. The stock rattled on the wooden slats of the deck, but she wouldn't—couldn’t—let go.

Pike sighed deeply, leaning her head back against the wall. “Captain Damon says it's only a couple days to shore. I'm not sure I’ll have enough time to prepare.”

Was she smiling? Dammit, Pike was smiling.

“What could possibly take more than two days to prepare?” Vex was smiling now, too, despite the urge to cry, despite the crusted tear tracks running down her face. Maybe it was the half-chuckle when she said the word _time_. Maybe it was the sparkle of hope in her distant expression. Something about Pike made even this weightiest of burdens seem weightless.

“The temple.” Pike really did giggle, then. “I've still got to re-stack the altar and finish painting and hang new doors and so many other things. Yesterday, I pulled down some old curtains and found a whole wall _covered_ in dick drawings. Just, _covered_ in dicks. Oh, it’s such a mess!”

They only laughed for a moment. Pike’s form flickered, and her wistful smile turned grave. “I'm sorry, I have to go. I just had to come check on you and see how you’re doing. I know you're taking it the hardest.”

Vex swallowed the fresh grief that squeezed in her chest, and did her best to smile. “I wish we could come to you quicker.”

Pike stood, the blue light stuttering and dimming, and looked out to the bow cutting through the clouds. “Keep it slow and steady, okay? I want you to get back safe.” Her voice had an odd, warbling tone, like an echo. The light was fading.

The light faded.

* * *

_The light faded._

_Ripley was dead._

_Anna Ripley was dead, and Vex’ahlia felt nothing._

_“Shit! Get over there!” She didn't know who said it, just that it was said from afar, through water and smoke. She was still pouring light into him, one hand pushed to his unmoving chest, one hand under his head, willing him, **begging** him to be alive._

_Nothing._

_Nothing but the crunching footsteps of Scanlan and Vax as they skirted the clearing that had become a molten crater. The unintelligible muttering of Keyleth casting another hopeless spell. The soundlessness of Pike erupting into being behind them, bright as a star._

_“What happened?” she shouted, skittering to a stop and sending glass shards flying. “How long—”_

_“A few minutes,” Keyleth said. It came out a croak. “More than a few minutes. I should have—I s-should h-have—” She trailed off into quiet, heaving sobs._

_Vax pulled her into his arms. She looked like Vex felt: hollow, bloodshot eyes; crusted blood around her nostrils; mouth and hands trembling with exhaustion; utterly spent. They were all spent._

_“Can’t you do anything?”_

_Vax slowly shook his head. “I-I can’t, there’s nothing—” His eyes were wild and afraid._

_Pike’s hands were warm on hers, softly and insistently prying her fingers away from the body—oh heaven, the **body** ; all gentle smiles and careful movements, beckoning Vax wordlessly to sit beside them. Vex relented, and gave them space to work._

_“I can’t work the ritual from where I am,” Pike explained, in a voice close to a reverent whisper, while she took Vax by the wrist through the motions of the resurrection spell. “It’s taking most of my energy just to be present. But I can guide you through it.”_

_They arranged candles, burned incense, and closed their eyes in prayer. There was stumbling and encouragement and reassurance, whispers and sobs and pauses to catch breath. There was a golden light in their hands._

_“Does anyone want to help?”_

_Scanlan nodded mutely and withdrew his flute from an inside pocket. The tune was shaky and improvised, but the light grew stronger, more brilliant. For a moment, Pike smiled._

_Then she looked at Keyleth, who looked petrified, and said “It’s okay. All you have to do is pray.”_

_Keyleth nodded and closed her eyes. The light grew stronger._

_There was another long moment of quiet, hushed beyond necessity, not speaking because the air itself had been silenced. The golden light glowed, and glowed, and glowed—and faded._

_Pike didn’t move._

_“What—” Vex managed at last, “what happened?” Nothing had happened._

_Pike didn’t move, then she opened her eyes. “Something’s wrong,” she said, gasping for breath, sweat beading on her forehead. “Sarenrae can’t find his soul.”_

_Thunder whispered on the horizon._

* * *

As the evening went on, the more it was really starting to look like rain. The wisps of cloud that had been gathering over the distant waves were now thick, black storm heads, spewing haze that obscured both the stars and any land that might have otherwise been visible. Vex could hear the whisper of thunder on the horizon, too far away to be any cause for worry.

A dark shape suddenly appeared over the bow—soundless, massive, with feathered wings that spanned the deck from one side to the other. It landed, clumsily side-stepping a large coil of rope, then folded its wings, and the giant owl’s form melted into that of Keyleth.

“Oh, hi,” she said, and then instantly doubled over and started dry-heaving over the railing.

Vex waited, not calmly, but quietly. Leave Keyleth alone under the empty sky? Never. “See anything?”

“Just the Sea, and a few scraggly rocks every now and then,” said Keyleth, wiping her mouth shakily with the back of a calloused hand. “It’s like Damon said: our best option is to land at the nearest skyship dock and make our way from there. Mind if I sit down?”

Something she hadn’t even realized was there suddenly tightened in her chest. This original best plan felt like an unexpected delay; the absence of a better option felt like the gods themselves harrying their every move, denying their progress. _What_ , she thought, bitter as cold tea, _could we have done so wrong that we’re being punished like this?_

_What could I have done so wrong?_

Keyleth slid to the floor next to her without waiting for a yes or no, sparing the barest glance at the rifle balanced on Vex’s knees. A few minutes of sleep had done her little good, and the hour and a half of transformation afterward had undone that good completely.

“I…. Vex, I’m scared.” Keyleth floundered for words. “What if he doesn't come back?”

Her heart turned cold. “Why would you even say that?”

“I mean, what if we haven’t fixed the problem, we get all the way to Whitestone for a real ritual, and it doesn’t work again? Are we going to keep trying, over and over and over? When does it stop? How do we know when to stop?” Fresh tears were running down Keyleth’s cheeks in wide tracks, cresting the dam over and over and over, and she was making no move to stem the current.

“Don’t—Keyleth, _don’t_ , alright? It’s going to work.” Vex laid a hand on Keyleth’s shoulder, squeezing in what she hoped was comfort. She was mostly trying to stop her own hand from shaking. “He’s going to come back.”

“But what if he _doesn’t_ , Vex?” Keyleth was gasping with the tears. “What if we have to do all—this—without him?” She dissolved into sobs, the kind of crying that had existed before words were ever spoken, the kind of crying that meant everything words could never say.

Vex could hardly breathe. Keyleth's outburst of grief hurt to watch from the outside, an impetuous, uninhibited display of every emotion Vex wanted to stop feeling in the first place. “We won’t. He’ll come back all on his own just to tell us what we’re doing wrong and how we couldn’t even survive a day without him.” She put her hand down, staring into the growing darkness and trying not to think about the reason they’d failed the first time.

_I can’t think about that. I just can’t._

Long, long minutes passed with no words, only Keyleth’s diminishing sobs, the rattling wind, and the waves so distant below them they hardly made the noise of waves. There were no birds or flying monsters this high in the clouds, just the blue sky edged with gold and the few stars bright enough to begin peeking out into the fading light.

Later, if anyone were to ask Vex about the journey, about _airships_ or _an adventure to a lost island_ or _how does it feel, flying?_ she’d remember nothing. Two days in the sky and another to Whitestone, vanished into that secretive place in the mind where all terrible things go, leaving only the dirt-tracks where their passing scraped away the veneer of normality separating people from the cruelty of their remembered past. She’d think back, and beyond the chill on the back of her neck sometimes in the mornings, beyond the lukewarm dread that pooled in the pit of her stomach without rhyme or reason, there would be only the distant waves. And that would be a kindness.

Keyleth sighed, a small, tired sound, leaning her head back against the spotted wood, her eyes open the barest golden sliver. “What’s that for?” she asked, indicating the rifle with an indiscriminate wiggle of her fingers. Vex readjusted her seat.

“Kill pirates before they even know we’re here.” She tried to smile, make a joke out of it, and felt it die on her face. The cold open air was no place for a smile to be planted and expected to grow.

Keyleth, though, did crack the hint of a smile. “Sure you will.”

She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “I’m just…. I’m holding onto it. For safekeeping.”

A harsh wind picked up just then, tugging at the hair coming loose from her braid and whipping her barrette of hawk feathers sharply against her cheek. The air was cold, damp, and faintly salty, carrying the portent of the black weather bearing down on them from the horizon: misty droplets of rain or sleet stung her face. Vex closed her eyes to it. Miserable weather was no stranger to her.

Her restless thoughts pounded in her skull. She found herself idly tracing her fingers along the intricately carved patterns in the barrel of Bad News, the barely-visible decorations that were obvious to an unseeing, curious hand. She’d never actually seen the rifle this close before, held it in her hands, admired the perfectionism in the craftsmanship. She’d never….

_Now I **will** never—_ She cut off that thought as soon as it arrived. No sense dwelling on the falsities of the future.

Keyleth sniffled and wiped her eyes one last time, moving to stand and making a minor spectacle of it. “Coming down?” she asked, with an amenable tilt of her head. Vex shook her head at the sky.

“Not yet.”

* * *

 

_There was a stunned silence hanging over everything, oppressive as a hot blanket, as though some spell had been cast that muffled the entire island around them. Not even the wind scraping through the sand was enough to break it. Beside her, Vax was unmoving, mute as a beggar’s grave, though she could hear the gasps of his breathing as he still cradled Percy’s head in his hands._

_Vex felt the beginning of real tears prickling in her throat, and shook her head at the sky._

_“Well?” Vax suddenly snapped, voice cracking like a gunshot into the quiet. “Are we...getting the fuck off this **gods-damned** island...or what?”_

_There was a familiar roar in the distance, off toward the mountain._

_“Grog!”_

_Vex could barely make out the shape of his form on the other side of the crater, hunched over something she couldn’t see. There was an air of movement about him, but tangled in the brush as he was, there was no way to discern what exactly he was doing. Only that he was doing it very, very angrily._

_**“Grog!** Pike shouted again. Everyone was looking now, curious._

_This time he looked up at them. She couldn’t make out any details, but she watched as he stood, stooped again to gather something in his arms, hoisted it over his shoulder, and began slowly trudging his way around the lip of the crater towards them._

_When he reached the treeline at the edge of the clearing, he let whatever he had been carrying tumble to the ground with a wet thud. Whatever he had been carrying was now clearly recognizable as the mangled body of Anna Ripley._

_Scanlan spat._

_“What do you want with this?” Grog rumbled, bleary-eyed and battered to hell, staring intently at Pike’s wavering form. The rage in his eyes had faded; now, he just looked tired._

_Vax cleared his throat. “I’ll—I’ll take it. Grog, you get—” He gestured helplessly at Percy’s body._

_Grog didn’t move until Pike walked over and laid her hand on his knee. “Grog,” she said, gentle and soft. “Come on, let’s go.” He nodded without speaking, then leaned down and scooped Percy up into his arms, as gently and easily as a mother would carry a baby. Vex had to look away._

_Vax finished muttering a prayer and staggered to his feet, holding Ripley by the collar. “Let's,” he said, shaking her a little, “get a move on then.”_

_They plodded down the hill, one after the other in a procession of mute resignation. By the time they stepped out of the forest onto the broken green shards of the pebble beach, the sun was low in the sky, only a few hours away from sunset._

_Vax all but tossed Ripley down onto the rocks, rooting around in his pocket for a few minutes before finally producing the Flare Stone. He looked around at the rest of them with a single eyebrow raised._

_“Anyone got something better?” Nobody said anything._

_He nodded, crushed the marble in his palm, lobbed it as high as it would go, and stomped over to the wreckage of their fight with the air Elementals only earlier that day._

_“Vex, help me with this, yeah?”_

_There were two rowboats left that hadn’t been tossed to pieces in the scuffle, overturned and lying a few dozen paces away from the scraped-clean landing site where they’d been found. After they’d gingerly dragged one back to the group, and they’d laid Ripley’s body in it without particular care, and they’d found the body of another of her crewmates and dumped him in as well, Vax made as if to kick a hole in the side, but instead he looked at Grog:_

_“You get all her shit?”_

_Grog grunted, “yeah.”_

_Vax grunted in assent and shoved the boat into the ocean with one swift push of his foot. It filled with water almost immediately, and promptly sank out of sight._

_There was a single, pointed moment of silence before peals of laughter began echoing into the air._

_“He—he just— **does** shit—without—saying anything!” Keyleth was doubled over, tears streaming down her face, holding her stomach from laughing. “Percy asked Scanlan to poke a lot of tiny holes in it! And he did! A lot of—tiny—fucking—holes!” Her words dissolved into helpless giggles._

_A few halfhearted chuckles rose from the rest of the group as well, as the reality of their situation began to set in. Here they were, on an island made of broken glass in the uncharted middle of no-fucking-where, beaten to a pulp, the airship they'd come in on somewhere off in the distance, and the rowboats that had been laying on the shore, almost waiting for this very moment, were full of tiny fucking holes._

_“Dammit, Percival,” she heard Vax saying, equal parts frustration and amusement. “Always have to fuck things up with your cleverness.”_

_The shadow of the airship came into view in the distance, following the thudding burst of the Flare Stone in the sky, and now, there was nothing but time ahead of them._

* * *

 

Vex pulled her cloak tighter around herself, shivering as the wind spat icy pellets at the deck and its inhabitants. Before the sun had fully set, the wind was a frigid gale threatening to blow away anything not nailed down, and forcing the airship to struggle to stay on course. Now, though, it was barely a sputtering breeze coming out of the approaching thunderstorm. That, combined with the dizzying altitude at which they flew, made her vigil more and more unbearable by the minute.

It was that moment that the door to the lower hold opened, and the tousled head of Vax’ildan appeared in the gap, looking for all the world like his life had been turned upside down and shaken vigorously until all the pieces had fallen out akimbo.

Vex knew how he felt.

“Oh, _there_ the fuck you are,” he said, slipping out of the trapdoor and setting it closed again. “Been looking everywhere for you.”

“Obviously not,” she snorted. “There’s only so many places on an _airship_ ,” she replied. “Did you forget that? Or did you just spend the last five hours turning over the same box and wondering why I wasn’t popping up?”

“I figured I’d turn you up eventually. Just wasn’t going to wait all night, that’s all. Storm’s blowing in, I couldn’t let you sit out here and freeze to death.”

“Aww, you missed me.”

“I always miss you.”

He sat, arms crossed and back hunched, against the same rain-soaked wall where Vex had been sitting for hours, staring blank-eyed at the darkening sky. The edge of the storm had brought plenty of rain, enough that Vex was soaked to the skin, her hair was plastered to her face, and droplets of water ran down the barrel of Bad News, dripping off the muzzle onto the deck by Vax’s knee.

“Don’t point that thing at me,” he huffed, deliberately nudging the rifle with his boot. “You’ll blow somebody’s brains out.”

Vex tutted. “If it's _your_ brain you're worried about, the bullet will just go right through your empty head, so _relax_.”

He rolled his eyes so hard she swore she could hear it. “It's _your_ brains I'm worried about, stupid, there's clearly not much left.” He kicked the gun again, harder.

She swatted at him without venom. “Hey,” he grumbled, ducking his head and reaching around her shoulder to pull her close. “Watch the hair, it’s all I have.”

Even in the dark, Vex could make out the outline of her brother's face, the suggestion of a smile lined with sorrow. It was black against a blacker sky: even the moon hid amongst the unyielding thunderclouds. If she looked for the familiar constellations—the Lion, the Basket Weaver, the Twin Bear Cubs—she found only raindrops. All the stars were behind them now.

“Hey.”

Vex wriggled around until she had settled into a comfortable position again. “ _Yes,_ dear brother?” she drawled, leaning on her vowels as heavily as possible, if only to hear the chuff of breath that meant he was annoyed but still tolerating it. It meant he still had hopeful thoughts.

“Hey,” he said again, more softly. The little creak in his voice, just the tired rub of one exhausted word against the other, was enough to make her sit up and pay attention. “I've got something for you.” Out of the vast depths of his nightshirt, Vax’ildan produced a single, perfect raven feather.

“I was talking to, you know, Her,” he continued, as Vex marveled at the color and texture of it with one tentative finger. “And then I felt something—” he tapped his chest, where she knew there was a deep pocket on the inside of his shirt— “and this was in there. Vex, She….”

She nodded. “She's looking out for you.”

“She's looking out for _us_ ,” Vax corrected. “I told you, this is for you.”

Vex froze at the sudden touch of his hand, the warm tips of his fingers a shock against the chilly softness of the raven feather that he deftly tucked behind her ear. It was dry, despite the rain, and she found herself running her finger along the edge of it, half disbelieving what it meant, partly afraid that it would melt away in the wetness of her hair. An irrational fear, a silly little girl’s fear—but it was so soft, so delicate and light, she could hardly feel the thing at all.

“God,” she said through the rising lump in her throat, half muffled by Vax’s shirt, “He’s really gone.”

It was stupid, so stupid. To be in tears over this, _now_ , when she’d known all along—had never had even a moment of not knowing, not one—that he was _really_ gone, if worse came to worse. Not that none of them had ever died; most of them had, including Vex herself. But this was different, somehow: more permanent, less _fixable_ , and she didn’t know what to do with the feelings that came along with knowing that.

Her brother’s arms squeezed tighter around her shoulders, head pressed against hers. “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “It’s going to be alright.”

It didn’t quite feel like the truth, but it was close enough that she didn't correct him.

The rain, still pounding on the deck from the westward storm, drowned out any further conversation. It was almost completely dark now, the rolling clouds steadily drawing over them like a thick, oppressive blanket, with no more wind to bring any warmth. Without any sun or southern heat, the raindrops felt more like pellets of ice on her skin. Vex shivered.

Vax yawned and uncurled himself from the position he’d been cramped in, standing to stretch and only pausing to notice that Vex hadn’t moved. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. You should too.”

“In a while,” she said, looking out to the barely-visible bow and the black, featureless sky beyond. “Not yet.”

She was going to be up all night.

**Author's Note:**

> q: how the hell do you tag a fic as "relationship" when half of the pair is dead  
> a: good question that i won't be answering
> 
> q: have you seen the rest of critical role like percy is f—  
> a: i have not seen past the end of episode 68 cause i feel like the next one needs to be savored, yanno, like you only get to watch it for the first time once, also i'm aware about percy
> 
> you can reblog it on tumblr [here](http://paintedpolarbear.tumblr.com/post/184026434709/a-moment-ago-paintedpolarbear-critical-role)


End file.
